Maj Gen (retd) Md Abdul Mohaiemen passed away of old age complications at Combined Military Hospital (CMH) in Dhaka on Tuesday. He was 84.
He received a military burial with honours, and was interred at Banani Military Graveyard with a guard of honour.
He is survived by his wife, Nilufar Begum Mohaiemen, and their two sons.
MA Mohaiemen was born in Bogra, in British India, on December 5, 1936.
Mohaiemen was a pioneering military cardio-thoracic surgeon in East Pakistan and then independent Bangladesh.
In the Pakistan period, Mohaiemen received an MBBS at Dacca Medical College (1958), and FRCS at Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh (1969).
As a surgeon he served under three flags– Army Medical Corps, Pakistan Army (1959-1971), Army Medical Corps, Bangladesh Army (1973-1996), and on army delegation to Okba Bin Naafe Military Hospital, Tripoli, Libya (1975-1979) as part of Libya-Bangladesh friendship treaty enacted by the government of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
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Mohaiemen served as a wartime field surgeon during the 1965 India-Pakistan War at Kutch, operating on wounded Pakistani soldiers, for which he received the Khidmat-e-Pakistan and Sitara e Harb medal.
Yet, only six years later, this decorated war veteran was classified, along with hundreds of other Bangali army officers posted in West Pakistan, as an “enemy of the state” when the 1971 Liberation War ended.
He was imprisoned in a prison camp in West Pakistan as a Prisoner Of War (POW), and only released along with hundreds of others after the 1973 Simla Accord. For service as a POW in the war, he eventually received the Joy Padak and Constitution Medal.
At Bangladesh CMH, he introduced Laproscopic Surgery, Advanced Neurosurgery, Endoscopic Joint Surgery, Advanced Microscopic Methods of ENT Surgery, and Phako Surgery for Cataracts.
He retired in 1995 as consultant surgeon general at Major General rank.
After retirement, he taught surgery at Jahurul Islam Medical College, Bajitpur (1996-2010), and Armed Forces Medical College, Dhaka (2010-2020).
He also served as chairman of Sufiya Khatun Girls School, Baufal, Patuakhali established by his grandfather Maulvi Emdad Ali.
Mohaiemen was also an avid photographer, and his photography and life have been memorialized in projects by his son, artist and academic Naeem Mohaiemen, including "Rankin Street 1953," "Baksho Rohoshyo (Chobi Tumi Kar?)," "Our Families Bleed History," "Tripoli Cancelled," and "Jole Dobe Na."